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71 Comments

2003-03-06 2:57 am

Looks cool

2003-03-06 3:06 am

there’s nothing else to say.

2003-03-06 3:09 am

Yikes. I hope that most of those interface elements are replaced by the time the real thing makes it to market. The interface appears to be something that a 2-year-old might construct from a magazine collage. The widgets are all deformed; the layout and design are nothing but confusing. In fact, Windows 3.1 sincerely has a better UI than this. When is Longhorn slated to be officially put on the shelves?

2003-03-06 3:32 am

For pete’s sake, it’s not coming out now! They WILL fix what is broken, they’re not a stupid rich company.

The only interesting thing is the huge number of UI ideas being taken from Linux/other projects, being polished much better than they would have been in linux, and then being inserted into windows. When will Linux developers wake up, if ever?

2003-03-06 3:36 am

Windows just keeps on getting uglier and uglier.

The Start menu keeps on getting bigger, fatter,

and more bloated. Windows 2000 is the last usuable

operating system BillCo has put out. The first time

I saw the default XP theme on a relative’s box, I

couldn’t stand it. Big dumb confusing Start menu.

It’s easy to see BillCo still does not have a clue

making a desktop GUI simple to use. Sure, pretty

much no one really does but BillCo seem to be trying

to make everything more complicated and uglier at

the same time. I will never upgrade beyond Windows

2000. All I can suck is yuck yuck yuck.

2003-03-06 3:39 am

All I can suck is yuck yuck yuck.

should be:

All I can say is yuck yuck yuck.

See, the word suck as in IT SUCKS

was stuck in my mind as I perused

those screenshots.

2003-03-06 3:53 am

Call me next year. Then it might be worth looking at.

2003-03-06 3:53 am

Does anybody else have this strange urge to vomit upon glancing at those images?

And whats up with that empty toolbar that takes up 20% of the screen? Its a freakin’ clock! And the other two functions shown used to only occupy the space they deserved, two small icons in the lower left.

2003-03-06 3:54 am

They look good to me. Can’t wait for it to be released.

2003-03-06 3:55 am

They are taking this blue theme crap a little too far… To be honest it strains the eyes.

2003-03-06 4:12 am

if you want it that bad … then download the theme from windowblinds

2003-03-06 4:21 am

Blue. Very Blue. I like grey too. It doesn’t look professional though. Too much screen space wasted on badly implemented task based windows.

2003-03-06 4:39 am

explain to me how that is going to make productivity better.

2003-03-06 4:44 am

explain to me how that is going to make productivity better.

it will make everyone switch to Mac System 7.5 which was probably the most unintrusive OS ever made.

2003-03-06 4:49 am

You like this, and you complain about Gnome?

2003-03-06 5:16 am

There is an expression in Russian that is losely translates to English as “Never show an unfinished project to a moron”. I am not sure if there is an equivalent expression in English.

2003-03-06 5:23 am

Who are all these people who claim that “the last stable MS OS was Win2K?” What are they doing that they can’t get XP to run?

I use XP and I very very rarely have issues with it. My Linux boxes choke more frequently for certain.

For you idiots just saying that XP sucks, you can turn off the silly XP theme and go back to the “classic” theme you’d recognize from Windows 2000. XP is a hundred times faster, a hundred times friendlier, and, in my experience, a hundred times more likely to fix a problem without a reboot.

I know I will try Longhorn, and I’m confident it will look nothing like we see in these pre-alpha screenshots.

2003-03-06 5:56 am

“XP is a hundred times faster”

Only if you’re hitting the crack pipe again.

2003-03-06 6:04 am

with the hours is a large font, then the minute in small, very cool.

2003-03-06 6:09 am

If your gonna release a screenshot, atleast have a small compression rate for maximum quality, or use something like PNG instead of JPEG, makes for much better viewing purposes.

2003-03-06 6:10 am

I use XP and I very very rarely have issues with it. My Linux boxes choke more frequently for certain.

I think a better question then is, what are you doing with your Linux box?

Not that my experience matters much to anybody, but I have used XP and I have dumped XP it is slow and unstable for me (the slowness creeps in over time, and the instability just jumps out at you every so often). When I use Windows, it is 2000.

2003-03-06 6:19 am

Yo listen up: here’s a story

About a little guy

That lives in a blue world

And all day and all night and everything he sees is

Just blue like him inside and outside

Blue his house with a blue little window

And a blue Corvette and everything is blue for him

I’m blue da ba dee da ba dee da ba dee

….

hehe I couldn’t resisted sorry

2003-03-06 6:22 am

That ‘sidebar’ thing looks a lot like Gkrellm without any cool plugins.

And why is about 30% of the vertical space in the file/etc explorer taken up with a big blue box that is blank most of the time? Even GNOME does a better job of keeping to a workable HIG!

2003-03-06 6:28 am

Sad. I thought that they could at least put some work into a more workable ‘Save As’ box.

2003-03-06 6:31 am

why do you have to reinstall it so many damn times. why do you have to reinstall every driver, every app, everytime this happens. why don’t they ditch the registry, dlls? Why can’t they write an OS that isn’t junk?

And we have to wonder how many times you have to reinstall XP, reinstall every driver (although, unless manually, it is very easy), every app, everytime it happens to you? I notice most people who have problems with XP are either in one or more of these groups

– Having incompatible hardware. Usually means crappy drivers or old unsupported hardware.

– Did an upgrade on a Win9x to Windows XP.

– Enjoys downloading every app that he could find on Download.com.

As for the registry, while I do agree that it is bad, you are obviously NOT LOOKING THE SAME WAY AS MICROSOFT. If they get rid of the registry, it would cause far bigger breakage and incompatibility which would surmount to a total backlash. that it if they get rid of it immediately. Right now, they are taking small steps in replacing stuff in Windows. They already took a lot of time to replace Windows 9x’s kernel, now they are probably gonna replace Win32.

Apple had a lot of backlash against it when it made the jump to OS X without proper migration. And they hold a small market. Imagine it for Microsoft.

2003-03-06 7:35 am

(Yes, my synopsis has zilch to do with my post)

I like it. Sort of.

I really like Windows XP. I think that even though the “look” changed, the Windows UI has been the same since Windows 95, and Longhorn isn’t going to change that.

That said, I think the sidebar on the right is FUGLY. It looks almost like the GNome Panel (or even the KDE panel), which I vehemently detest. From the looks of the popup menu though, it’s completely optional.

What DO I like about it?

I like how “clean” the taskbar looks. My primary dislike of windows XP is a simple one – the taskbar is BULKY. I don’t mind the “look”, but the extras take up pixels. I think they should go for something cleaner. Like … ditch the fake 3D. Go completely flat. Maybe use dropshadows instead.

XP is a great OS and has many fixes over 2k – the handling of application crashes for one. In most of my experiences its not Windows that brings down Windows, but applications / hardware and drivers. My PC (1.8Ghz northwood, 512mb DDR) is currently handling:

Opera(12 tabs), Outlook XP (over 1000 items in the inbox), two Visual Studio.Net designers, QCD media player, Two Word XP documents, a text editor, Dreamweaver and PGP8/AVG/Activesync/MBM in the background without any loss of speed. This installation has been on the PC for approx 18 months with some frequent installing / removing of software.

I will admit however that the Luna interface is ‘not to my taste’ – easily fixed though, I’ve been using WaterColor and its Ergonomic colour setting since XP first came out….which suits me fine.

Anyway, back on topic.

The interface in the screenshots is….errm…interesting. While i like the overall colours and window border style/start button that sidebar is gonna take some getting used to – I just value my screen real estate too much. The new ‘thin’ taskbar is cool with the text clock and a welcome improvement.

Of main interest to me is the explorer.exe error shown in http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/longhorn/Image26.jpg – it clearly shows explorer throwing an exception running in the .Net CLR – does this mean that win32 is completely replaced? Surely that can’t be the case – but possibly Longhorn is working from a much later version of the .Net framework? Obviously .Net will be an integrated API rather than a downloadable addon, but I didn’t expect to see explorer throwing that error…..yet…..

The eye candy on the explorer windows is also too much. However, I am hoping that this is just one of those ‘test features’ that get thrown into alphas for the hell of it, rather than a serious consideration by MS. No doubt we will see changes as WinFS actually starts to appear in builds that get ‘leaked’ *cough* *cough* to the net as development time goes by – is it still emulated under this build as with the last?

I have high hopes for Longhorn, and hopefully the DRM inclusion will be switch-offable by the end user. Luckily OGG becoming more widespread should see to the popularity of WMP in longhorn – personally choosing QCD with a nice skin ( http://www.quinnware.com/ ) over it as my main audio player.

Back to that sidebar – who knows, we might say “how ever did we live without it” in 5 years time…..or maybe not. Then again, it might be another alpha feature that provokes too much negative feedback from testers so gets canned before any late stage. It will be interesting to see what WinFS specific tabs get added to it in the future however.

It’s too early to speculate on the longhorn UI – anyone remember whistler>XP? Luckily the original theme is still alive thanks to leaks like this alpha, so I’m happy

2003-03-06 8:34 am

It is to dark. It doesnt look good whith the toolbar in explorer etc being that dark. I hope they change it before release, they probably do…

Anyway, the windowborder and the taskbar looks much better than in XP

2003-03-06 9:15 am

Why is everyone complaining about the colours. Don’t you know yuo can change them?

You should be worrying about allowing Microsoft to access your PC at its whim, checking out what software you have, and recording the titles and licensing of what you play on mediaplayer.

If you purchase for a company, you should be worrying about the licensing costs provisions and the fact that Microsoft can demand an audit at its whim.

2003-03-06 9:28 am

All of you flamers of microsoft are obviously anti-social kiddies locked up in their rooms hacking their linux kernel so that they can download virtual porn faster and hidden from their parents!

Come on! Wake up!

Those screenshots are not nearly as bad as some of you lamers claim. The screen real estate is slightly lost, but then again, most text and pictures scroll up and down, so the side real estate isn’t going to be missed that much! As for colors, damn you must be dumb not to know you can change such things. Blue theme overboar? Its good for the eyes! Having bright colors will cause you eye strain soon. Cool colors are easier on the eyes over a long period of time! Get you head out of your asses and face the fact that microsoft is beating you *nix heads all over the place!

2003-03-06 9:34 am

I read somewhere that the installl speed has improved between 3683 and 4008 (now taking about half the time of XP). I read on BetaNews that MS now uses WinPE or “Windows Preinstallation Environment” which is a small OS that uses about 40 megs of ram (120 on disk) and provides a GUI installer. The article also coveres a couple new features like virtual folders and the ability to stack files. Interesting review.

2003-03-06 9:55 am

“There is an expression in Russian that is losely translates to English as “Never show an unfinished project to a moron”. I am not sure if there is an equivalent expression in English.”

The version I know is “Never show a fool or a woman an unfinished project”. But it is a dangerous saying to use in mixed company. 😉

2003-03-06 9:58 am

“Those screenshots are not nearly as bad as some of you lamers claim. The screen real estate is slightly lost, but then again, most text and pictures scroll up and down, so the side real estate isn’t going to be missed that much!”

If they didn’t insist on running applications on the same display as the desktop, they wouldn’t have to push all the components of the desktop program to the edge of the screen.

2003-03-06 10:51 am

Can someone please define “professional look” for a non-native speaker? I suppose because a look is from professional graphic designers (yes those with a degree in graphics design) of a professional company doesn’t count. So would someone please enlighten me about what “professional look” is about? Is there even an ISO standard?

For me the UI in the screenshots looks professional as in professionaly done. But that seems to be the wrong point of view here.

2003-03-06 11:09 am

“There is an expression in Russian that is losely translates to English as “Never show an unfinished project to a moron”. I am not sure if there is an equivalent expression in English.”

The version I know is “Never show a fool or a woman an unfinished project”. But it is a dangerous saying to use in mixed company. 😉

Compared to the use of SVG vector icons in KDE, they have a lot of catching up to do.

2003-03-06 1:40 pm

1) The two toolbars sucks a lot. Really. Why not merging the two toolbars into one?

2) The database approach is a great idea, the virtual folders are a great idea (I use it a lot on Evolution), I like it, but… hey, Microsoft, I know Intel needs to sell those multi-GHz P4, but can you throw in something lighter? People will turn off the feature if it’s too heavy.

2003-03-06 1:40 pm

Just like another hobby OS…too bad

2003-03-06 1:58 pm

I read on BetaNews that MS now uses WinPE or “Windows Preinstallation Environment” which is a small OS that uses about 40 megs of ram (120 on disk) and provides a GUI installer.

When I first read about WinPE somewhere, I nearly chocked when I encountered the words “consumes about 40 megs of ram” and “small OS”.

When a small OS takes 40 megs of ram, the produces are in dire need of getting fired and taught a lesson or few.

Just as an example: look at QNX on a disk. *On a disk*, that’s 1.44Mb floppy, and you do get a GUI and web browser with it.

And there are even smaller GUI systems out there, I’m sure.

2003-03-06 2:01 pm

I just removed XP Pro and returned to Windows 2000. My PC (1 gig Athlon 512 meg RAM) is far faster and more stable. I hated the ‘boiled lolly’ look of XP. The greyscale is much easier on the eye and much less of a resource hog. No wallpaper, no screensaver or other junk.

Linux is still obsessed with lairy GUIs (KDE and Gnome). QNX is still the cleanest GUI around and my favourite apart from Mac OS7.

If Apple could manage to run an effective GUI on 1 meg RAM (OS 6.7) there is no reason why 64 meg should be insufficient

My general impression is that Microsoft has decided that they want to add candy but aren’t sure how to actually make it more usable in the process. There is soooo much wasted space there it is scary. Not just on the side bar (which I am sure could be turned off) but on all the apps too. And that start menu? OMG Putting everything in one place is a sure sign that you just have no clue how to do it right.

And the blue!!! It hurts!!! Stop the pain!!!!

2003-03-06 2:36 pm

Thanks Microsoft for making Linux look so nice and professional in comparison ! Now people will want to switch to Linux for look & feel reasons instead of security/stability/freedom/quality reasons. Well, at least they’ll switch.

2003-03-06 2:52 pm

Personally xp was the last version of windows I ever plan to use (for home use, work I have little control). I really should have stuck with W2K, but I thought I would try XP for myself.

What really turned me off was

* – The constant prodding to sign up for a microsoft passport account

* – One day Media player just disappeared (The executable) No clue how, or why. Virus software and firewall detected nothing. I could not just reinstall media player. – Microsofts suggestion (from knowledgebase) REINSTALL WINDOWS – why should I have to reinstall an OS to get my media player back?

* – When I went to reactivate, it wouldn’t – and this was on a weekend. I had to wait until I could contact an actual person to activate windows, as it wouldn’t let me even log in.

* – Remote desktop is nice, but only one connection is allowed, and it disables local logins while connected. I can do this with linux with hundreds of terminals and one installation.

These are just a couple of reasons, but I don’t think I’ll ever buy another copy of windows. I’ll stick with linux, and if the winds change, I might even try apple.

2003-03-06 3:16 pm

Funny to read how everyone is making fun and telling how crappy the current theme is.

Even better that you people just don’t wanna get that this is an alpha and just a placeholder theme.

I just removed XP Pro and returned to Windows 2000. My PC (1 gig Athlon 512 meg RAM) is far faster and more stable. I hated the ‘boiled lolly’ look of XP. The greyscale is much easier on the eye and much less of a resource hog. No wallpaper, no screensaver or other junk.

Never heard of the classic skin, eh? Real function of it is turning the theming off FYI.

But whatever.

2003-03-06 3:16 pm

Professional

1 a : of, relating to, or characteristic of a profession b : engaged in one of the learned professions c (1) : characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession (2) : exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace

Profession

4 a : a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation b : a principal calling, vocation, or employment c : the whole body of persons engaged in a calling

Thus, to me, a professional UI is a self-seeking term. A profession is anything requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation and professional is anything of, relating to, or characteristic of a profession.

Therefore Microsoft Windows has always had a professional look as it is the operating system and toolset used by the majority of professionals in the world. However, this will NEVER satisfy the people who fail to see that the UI/theme/color-scheme is so totally unimportant to a professional. The theme does not help me be more productive; it does not help me be more creative. It is something that is a subjective as religion.

One man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh.

2003-03-06 4:46 pm

why?

they are not even guaranteed to be an indication of next windows release

who cares anyway

2003-03-06 5:01 pm

So this is what the next KDE will look like?

-3BSD

2003-03-06 5:05 pm

Appearance of the UI is important. People work “in” their, computers get immersed tin the applications they are using. A plain, gray dull environment is like an office with no view, no pictures and dull colored walls. The computer isn’t just a hammer, its an environment to work.

I like XP’s Luna, I like OSX, I have hated Win Classic since Win95.

2003-03-06 5:29 pm

My PC (1.8Ghz northwood, 512mb DDR) is currently handling:

Opera(12 tabs), Outlook XP (over 1000 items in the inbox), two Visual Studio.Net designers, QCD media player, Two Word XP documents, a text editor, Dreamweaver and PGP8/AVG/Activesync/MBM in the background without any loss of speed. This installation has been on the PC for approx 18 months with some frequent installing / removing of software.

That’s nothing. I built my own computer for work a couple years ago, back when everyone was running on 400 Mhz systems. I built an 800 Mhz Duron with 256mb DDR and a dual display Matrox G450. On it I run Galeon and Phoenix(Multiple windows with 10~12 tabs each), Evolution 1.08 (over 3000 items in my inbox), multiple Excel and Word documents opened up in Open Office, several text documents opened in gedit, several konqueror file manager sessions browsing various filesystems both local and remote, remote X11 displays of commercial UNIX software I’m required to use to do my job, mplayer to watch Movies and TV shows when I get bored, xmms, gkrellm, KDE and GNOME, Kdevelope, about 20 or more terminals opened in tabs, several of them running screen or color syntax highlighted vi coding sessions. All night last night it was logging packets from some misbehaving Linux boxes across our network to troubleshoot some network problems we’ve been having, so I have a few ssh sessions and cat pipes open as well. Oh, but I have over 1/4TB of disk space, so I don’t have to worry about the tcpdump logging causing any serious problems overnight. Oh, and I didn’t mention, this is both the main CD burner and website for our department.

My system runs very healthy with over 100MB of RAM available and 200MB of swap. Uptime is currently 45 days. The only problem I have is when I come in on Monday I have to touch my swapped out web browsers and email before the system pages them back into RAM. I suspect that problem will go away shortly after RedHat 8.1 or the 2.6 kernel is released.

But there is one problem with the G450, it doesn’t play my video on both monitors (hardware limitation), so I was going to swap in a PCI radeon card and reconfigure X so I can stretch my movies across both monitors with xinerama. But this is my desktop system, so I can do that whenever I get around to it. Oh, and I don’t really think RedHat is the most stable or best performing Linux distro, its just easy and saves me time.

2003-03-06 6:18 pm

Even thought it is pre-alpha they still haven’t abandoned the horrific XP implementation of the search feature.

2003-03-06 6:22 pm

Ugly, Butt Ugly, Bugly, Fugly, and a waste of space.

So, how long until KDE adopts this interface?

2003-03-06 6:59 pm

That’s nothing. I built my own computer for work a couple years ago, back when everyone was running on 400 Mhz systems. I built an 800 Mhz Duron with 256mb DDR and a dual display Matrox G450. On it I run Galeon and Phoenix(Multiple windows with 10~12 tabs each), Evolution 1.08 (over 3000 items in my inbox)…

That doesn’t mean a thing. I’m Pentium 100 with 64 meg of ram. I run Gentoo, with a vmware Windows Xp. Then nested in the Xp Session I have Redhat, and nested in the Redhat Session I have Gentoo again, then nested in Gentoo I have BeOS. In BeOS I have 42 word documents and Jenna Jameson video. In the XP window I am playing Quake III (I roxxorz), and in the Gentoo window I am typing a novel, and playing oggs with my Redhat window. All of this is one handed because with my other hand I am piloting my rocket ship (yeah, I have one) to Sonic to get a bacon-cheeseburger. I know your jealous.

2003-03-06 7:06 pm

I always think MS’s products are for those less-skilled people to use computer, or offer very simple softwares for those starters.

His logic just like Chinese Mao, take rural first, then force the urban to compliant. What is more, MS is more and more like communist–just have a look what they did and what they are doing for/to those people have no choice, what they are boasting to those people who know nothing/little of them.

Have to say MS do great work to bring PC to common people, but one way can not be always right.It is horrible to force people to obey its rule whatever it is suitable or not now or in the near future.

Smart people have felt MS is try to change its policies, but it never want to tell its users, it always boast its current products are the best.

So, i have to say MS’s success is based on those brainless people, and MS is try to keep those people stil brainless and feel to be happy.

Actually I am. How did you get movies to play on a 100 Mhz system? In my experience even 800 Mhz of Duron has trouble on 720×480 xvid/ogg ogm files with things like b-frames. It could be that I’m using a beta codec, too. I am really curious how much CPU is required to stream a DVD quality ogm file over a network without dropping frames. For things like entertainment centers and stuff.

2003-03-06 8:30 pm

Looks like XP

2003-03-06 9:31 pm

I was being facetious. I just always think it is kind of funny when people start having arguments whose computer does more for with less (not that it isn’t commendable, I just don’t see it as worth a dick-waving contest).

2003-03-06 9:47 pm

i second that yawn…………..

2003-03-07 12:24 am

They need to do something about the glare on the clock face. That would give me a headache.

2003-03-07 12:55 am

I turned off all the crap in XP. Then I installed TweakUI to remove most of the other crap that the base system doesn’t let me get rid of. Mostly sucessful cleanup.

These new screenshots are telling… they tell me how despirate Microsoft is to make each Windows release look different so that they can convince people to upgrade.

The actual useful differences between W2k and XP Pro are small enough to have been encompassed in a $45 upgrade.

Don’t be fooled by the psychological games. Stores rearrange their shelves and placement of product, Microsoft puts on a new look and hides everything under three more layers of menus and a dozen extra clicks, but it’s all just a game without any real substance.

What would impress me is if the OS architecture were seriously changed to improve actual functionality. There have been changes, but over the whole course of the product’s lifespan, it’s not that impressive of a change (considering that some of the most impressive stuff is that the OS is more stable now… something it should have been during the first freaking release).

I see the bigges enhancement: slideshow on your fn taskbar! Great! Nice work! Now I know why am I waiting for Longhorn, and I’ll spend a lot of money, just to see my own pictures in thumbnails on my taskbar! VERY USEFUL! Windows 4ever!